A continuing demand exists for protective clothing for the elderly and the infirm, particularly for the mentally deficient patients that may be incontinent or without sufficient mental faculties to enable reasonable control over bodily functions. This problem is increasing as large segments of the population are living longer and end up requiring extended nursing care. This problem still exits today, even though various protective clothing designs have been widely used for years.
Currently, when it becomes necessary to keep clothing on a mentally disabled patient, caregivers must resort to using a plurality of fasteners, or other difficult to manipulate systems, none of which seem to reliably work. So, constant vigilance is required, which is another workload factor for caregivers. In general, such heretofore used protective clothing and the methods for their use are not designed for effectively preventing the patient from removing the clothing, and thus their use has certain drawbacks.
In general, the previously utilized protective clothing designs which are known to me have left something to be desired. Thus, it would be desirable for a number of reasons to be able to provide improved protective clothing which hinders or makes it impossible for the patient to remove the clothing. First, an improved garment fastening system could significantly decrease the caregiver labor required for re-clothing certain patients. Second, protective clothing that is difficult or impossible for elderly to remove make it possible to have adequate clothing on the patient at all times. Finally, caregiver personnel would not have to worry about having to constantly re-dress patients, or clean up areas which have become contaminated with excrement or bodily fluids by mentally incapacitated patients. Consequently, I have developed a design for a novel body suit, and a design for closure of the same which hinders or prevents the elderly and the infirm from removing the same. The apparatus of the present invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art by providing a protective outer garment which is essentially unremovable by the patient. Thus, the advantages offered by my novel protective clothing and their fastening techniques, and which may be provided in various sizes which are easily serviced by caregivers, are important and self-evident.